I am a newbie and trying to break into the networking field. I plan to give my CCNA and MCSA certification late this year or early next year. I am very interested in networking and plan to pursue my career in this field. However I have some questions:
I am interested in Administrator (type) jobs which have to deal with networking. What is the right approach that I have to take/follow to land in these kind of jobs?
What are the issues/tasks/challenges do people in these jobs encouter every day?
Apart from having sound knowledge in networking, what other areas do I have to be strong in?
What are the different job positions do people in this field suitable for?
Is it really necessary give the MCSA/MCSE exams to get a job in this field?
Compared to other IT jobs (Java, .Net, etc) how frequent are openings in these jobs?
Appreciate your help in guiding my career path.
Thanks.

How to land these jobs? Well you are on the right path earning your certs. Given that you achieve that you will still be trying to enter a profession where job experience is highly valued. You will have no choice but to seek out entry level roles and employers who have such roles available. Given that, your appearance, attitude, ability to work with others, communication skills, and personality during interviews will be very important.

Challenges? The biggest one is working hours. Keep in mind the profession you strive to enter involves building and maintaining network systems that support computing that people and business depend on. You need to understand that the nature of the job is all about making changes to continually improve and mature the network, and such changes are ALWAYS done during non-peak usage hours, and often require minor outages that typically are only allowed to happen in the wee hours of the morning. It isn’t uncommon for engineers to be making changes on a Sunday morning at 3AM…

Networking is in hot demand. A typical nework admin team has many kinds of systems to support so a career usually involves maturing your skills to be broader in the kinds of systems you are skilled in supporting. From there, if you have the people skills and desire to be a leader, IT management is a frequent transition made by technical people.

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Other Certs to pusue would be the Comptia series:

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